Chelsea Dunn Torrey

Chelsea Dunn Torrey joined LAJC as the Youth Justice Program Director in 2025. Before LAJC, she worked for Southern Legal Counsel, a small non-profit impact litigation firm in Gainesville, Florida. She joined SLC as an attorney in July 2018 and became the Legal Director in 2025. She previously served as the Director of the Decriminalizing Poverty Project, leading SLC’s efforts to end the criminalization of poverty by challenging governmental laws and policies aimed at arresting rather than housing people experiencing homelessness. Prior to this, she helped establish SLC’s Healthy Kids Medical-Legal Partnership with UF Health, which seeks to resolve the health-harming legal needs of some of Florida’s underserved children. She also litigated cases involving the rights of persons with disabilities and special education cases.

Chelsea began her legal career as a clerk for the Virginia Supreme Court and then took a position at the Child and Family Law Division of Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS), the Massachusetts Public Defender’s office. She started with CPCS as trial attorney and became a Supervising Attorney, representing indigent parents and children in dependency cases.

Chelsea is a member of the Virginia Bar, the Florida Bar, and the Massachusetts Bar. She obtained her J.D. from the University of Richmond School of Law in 2009, where she graduated magna cum laude and received the Nina R. Kestin Service Award for contributions to the school, community, and legal profession.  She served as an editor for the Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest, in which she had two comments published